Plot
Three parapsychology researchers who specialize in ghosts, Dr. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis), Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), find themselves out of work when Columbia University terminates their grant. Before they are removed from the university, they investigate a haunting at the New York City Public Library, where a ghostly librarian, the Library Ghost, runs them out after they observe some symmetrical book stacking.
With no academic backing, the three start a business called "Ghostbusters," a professional paranormal investigation and elimination service, out of an old firehouse. They get around the city in a converted 1959 Cadillac ambulance dubbed Ecto-1 and hire Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) to run the phones. Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) of 550 Central Park West comes to them after something terrifying happens in her kitchen, centered on the name "Zuul." Venkman uses the visit to get close to Dana.
Their first paying job is a ghost at the Sedgewick Hotel, where the team captures a green, gluttonous spirit (Slimer) after wrecking a ballroom. The bust makes them an overnight success across New York and the nation. As the calls pile up, they bring on a fourth member, Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson). Their growing fame also draws Walter Peck (William Atherton) of the Environmental Protection Agency, who tries to inspect the team's storage facility and is refused.
Dana is later attacked in her apartment and possessed by Zuul, the Gatekeeper. Her neighbor Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) is chased by a Terror Dog and possessed by Vinz Clortho, the Keymaster. Both are minions of the god Gozer. Peck obtains a court order to shut down the team's containment grid; the collapse releases hundreds of trapped ghosts across the city, and the team is arrested. From jail, they work out that Dana's building was built as a giant antenna designed to draw in and concentrate spiritual energy. The mayor (David Margulies) releases them over Peck's objections.
Assisted by police and the Army, the Ghostbusters reach the rooftop temple atop 550 Central Park West, too late to stop the possessed Dana and Louis from opening the gate. Gozer (Slavitza Jovan) appears, shrugs off their proton streams, and tells them to choose the form of the destructor. Ray cannot keep his mind blank and thinks of the most innocent thing he can: the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, which materializes as a giant and lays waste to the city. Egon proposes crossing the streams, a "total protonic reversal" that should close the gate. The plan works, sealing the portal, destroying Gozer, and returning Dana and Louis to normal.
Origins as "Ghost Smashers"
Much of the development and production history in this article is drawn from Don Shay's Making Ghostbusters.1
Aykroyd conceived the project out of his own fascination with the paranormal, originally as a vehicle for himself and his Saturday Night Live friend John Belushi. His early story, titled "Ghost Smashers," was very different from the finished film: a group of Ghostbusters would travel through time, space, and other dimensions to take on huge ghosts.
Aykroyd began writing his first draft in late 1981. Progress was slow because of his other projects. On March 5, 1982, while writing one of Venkman's lines, Aykroyd learned that Belushi had died. He sent a half-finished script to Bill Murray, who responded favorably, then took it to Ivan Reitman. At that point the script ran only forty or fifty pages, was set in the future across multiple dimensions, had little character work, and read more seriously than it was funny; Reitman estimated the effects would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and set it aside. Aykroyd kept working and finished a script of around 180 pages on January 20, 1983. He submitted it to Reitman that April, along with concept drawings by his artist friend John Daveikis and a videotape of himself in a jumpsuit holding a makeshift proton pack built from styrofoam and old radio parts.23
The meeting and the green light
Reitman focused on Aykroyd's strongest idea: a group of men operating from a firehouse and responding to supernatural emergencies the way firefighters do. He liked the concept, the equipment, the car, and the ghost-in-a-stop-sign logo, but had reservations about the fantasy elements. The two met for lunch at Art's Delicatessen in May 1983, where Reitman suggested setting the film in a modern American city, making it an origin story, and bringing in Harold Ramis. Aykroyd agreed at once. The same afternoon, Reitman and Aykroyd walked to Ramis's office at The Burbank Studios; after about twenty minutes Ramis was in. Reitman then asked his agent, Mike Ovitz, who also represented Aykroyd, Ramis, and Murray, to set up a meeting with Columbia Pictures chairman Frank Price.
Reitman gave Price a roughly five-minute pitch with no finished script. Price liked it, told him to keep the budget in the mid-twenties of millions, and set a deadline: the studio needed a tentpole for summer 1984, leaving about a year to write, shoot, and finish the effects. With two writers, two associate producers, most of the cast, and no effects house, Ghostbusters was greenlit.
Writing the script
The first Aykroyd-Ramis collaborative draft was completed on June 6, 1983, settling on a new story the three of them agreed on; Ramis came up with making the leads parapsychologists at a university. As crew came aboard, including production designer John DeCuir, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge, and editor Sheldon Kahn, the budget was refined upward to just under $30 million. The pacing was a recurring problem: for a long time the film did not get going until the hotel scene around page 40, so the library ghost (and later the ESP test) were added to start the movie earlier. In this draft the team was fired from a small New England college before going to New York; the realization that the city itself mattered led to opening at the New York Public Library. The love interest began as an alien fugitive named Zuul who took human female form, an idea the writers found funny but not romantic; an associated restaurant sequence and a scene where the alien wakes up as a warthog were eventually cut.
The second draft was hammered out over about two and a half weeks around the July 4th weekend at Martha's Vineyard, where Aykroyd was already living. The three worked in his basement on an old Royal electric typewriter. The hotel ghost, earlier described only as a foul-smelling amorphous vapor, became a green, potato-shaped creature. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, present in every draft, became the team's final encounter in this rewrite. The writers also added a fourth Ghostbuster, Winston, to serve as a grounded, skeptical voice for the audience, with his introduction delayed until after the team's first big success. Earlier drafts ended with a grand wrap-up, including a multinational corporation called Ghostbusters International and tidy romantic resolutions, before that material was dropped. The July rewrite was completed on July 6, and the team left Martha's Vineyard on July 10 with a strong working script; Reitman began auditions while rewriting continued.
The third draft, finished August 6, refined the film further. The villain Ivo Shandor returned in name, reimagined as a deranged surgeon, architect, and Gozer worshiper executed at Sing Sing. Slimer's design and role were largely locked in. Louis Tully, still written for John Candy at this stage, had earthier interests and hosted a party. A sequence of Louis being chased by a Terror Dog onto the hood of a taxi appeared here. The final shooting script was completed on October 7, the whole script having come together in about three months.
Casting and production
Around the start of shooting it became clear John Candy would pass on Louis Tully. Reitman called Rick Moranis the same day and sent him the script; Moranis called back two hours later to accept, and he developed Louis into the accountant seen in the finished film.
Bill Murray was finishing photography on The Razor's Edge in Paris and returned shortly before production. Reitman and Ramis met him at La Guardia, where he came through the terminal with a stadium horn that played dozens of fight songs. Murray started on October 27, 1983, flying in by Concorde and going straight to work at 62nd Street and Madison.4 A week before principal photography, during camera and wardrobe tests, Reitman shot a montage of the three leads in uniform running down Madison Avenue.
Principal photography began in New York in late October 1983, with a week of preliminary second unit work followed by about three and a half weeks of shooting in the city. Some material, including most of the Tavern on the Green scenes and the Subway Ghost, was shot in the early October window before principal photography proper. The first day of principal photography covered the New York Public Library exteriors and reading room and the Irving Trust bank on Avenue of the Americas, which became the fictional Manhattan City Bank. Dialogue continued to change during rehearsal and shooting, with scenes rearranged, some lines improvised, and others cut or looped later.
The main unit moved to Los Angeles around November and December for roughly nine weeks at The Burbank Studios and area locations. The shoot started slowly, falling about seven days behind early on; assistant director Gary Daigler gave Murray a two-way radio so he and Aykroyd could wait at a nearby sushi restaurant until the crew was ready.3 Stage 12 held the apartment interiors and hallway and the Sedgewick elevator and corridors, and DeCuir built the million-dollar Temple of Gozer set on Stage 16. Los Angeles locations included the Biltmore Hotel (used for Sedgewick and 550 Central Park West scenes), a working firehouse for the interior firehouse scenes, and the Los Angeles Public Library for the downstairs stacks.
Characters and casting notes
Egon Spengler's name was assembled by Ramis from "Egon Donsbach" and "Oswald Spengler." In shaping the character, Ramis also drew on Egon Schiele, the Austrian Expressionist painter, and Léon Krier, a Luxembourg architectural theorist and urban planner. Egon's distinctive hairstyle was credited by Ramis to production assistant Peggy Semtob.3
Dana Barrett was written as a model in early drafts. Sigourney Weaver proposed making her a professional musician, a change the writers felt strengthened the character considerably. Weaver also suggested that Dana describe Venkman as resembling a game-show host, which stuck in the final film.3
Winston Zeddemore was originally named Ramsey in Aykroyd's early drafts, conceived with an actor like Eddie Murphy in mind. Gregory Hines was also approached for the role. By the final shooting script the character had evolved significantly, and Ernie Hudson was cast.3
After John Candy passed on Louis Tully, Michael McKean also read for the part before Rick Moranis accepted. Moranis shaped the character substantially, including improvising freely during the party scene.3
The role of Janine Melnitz was offered to Sandra Bernhard before Annie Potts was cast.3
For Gozer, Aykroyd traced the name partly to a Gozer Chevrolet dealership in upstate New York and to a documented English haunting in which the name reportedly appeared. Earlier drafts imagined Gozer in the likeness of game-show host Bert Parks. Reitman preferred an androgynous figure, referencing David Bowie and Grace Jones; Slavitza Jovan was cast in the role, with Paddi Edwards providing the voice.3
During preproduction, Reitman described Slimer to the crew as "sort of like Bluto from Animal House, like the ghost of John Belushi," a comparison Aykroyd never disputed. The name "Slimer" itself emerged during post-production, arising informally from the "He slimed me" line in the Sedgewick Hotel sequence.3
Music
Reitman engaged Elmer Bernstein to write the orchestral score months before principal photography began; Bernstein was the first crew member hired for the production. He recorded at The Burbank Studios using a 72-member orchestra, with orchestration handled by his son Peter Bernstein and by David Spear. Alongside the orchestra, Bernstein incorporated three Yamaha DX-7 synthesizers and the Ondes Martenot, a rare French electronic instrument, for which he brought a specialist player from England. Two selections from Bernstein's score were included on the commercial soundtrack album.5
The title song, "Ghostbusters," was written and performed by Ray Parker Jr. The song was released as a single alongside the film and became the most recognized musical element of the franchise, subsequently appearing in virtually every Ghostbusters production and adaptation that followed.6
Visual effects
The only major effects houses available, Industrial Light & Magic and Apogee, were both booked, ILM with Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones, and Star Trek III, and Apogee with Dune. Producer Michael Gross consulted Don Shay, a friend since high school, and learned that Richard Edlund was leaving ILM to start his own studio. Columbia fronted $5 million for Edlund to set up Boss Films (later Entertainment Effects Group), which worked exclusively on Ghostbusters. Edlund, who took Reitman's offer by phone while recovering from back surgery, had a little over ten months to build the studio, develop techniques, and design and execute the work. During preproduction, freelance artists supervised by Gross produced hundreds of ghost and creature concepts that Reitman mixed and matched.
Filming wrapped in early February 1984 after about fifteen weeks. Edlund's team then had less than four months to complete roughly 200 to 260 optical effects shots. With a few weeks left, Reitman wanted to add many more shots; Edlund has recounted talking him down, joking that they had to do "the samurai cut."
Title clearance
Preproduction was well underway before anyone realized Filmation had produced a short-lived Saturday-morning live-action show called The Ghost Busters during the 1975-76 television season. Columbia entered negotiations to secure the title, and the talks dragged on through much of the New York location shooting, leaving the production uncertain what the film would be called. To hedge, the crew prepared three different firehouse signs; the only other serious contender was "Ghoststoppers." A deal with Filmation eventually let them keep the original title, with Joe Medjuck recalling it was about four weeks into shooting before they knew for certain they could use the name.
Production notes
- The on-screen slime was made from methylcellulose ether, a powdered thickening agent used in pharmaceuticals and food.
- Egon's analogy for rising psychokinetic energy began as the universe described as an expanding four-dimensional balloon; only the "Twinkie" version survived in the final cut.
- Three arms grab Dana in her chair; the design originally included a human arm, a hooked arm, and a green frog-like sucker arm, but Reitman cut the sucker arm as too cartoonish.
- The street sinkhole was a costly stunt, around $250,000, that Reitman fought to keep because it showed the threat the team faced. The shot moved between the real Central Park West and a Columbia back-lot recreation of the lower floors of the building.7
- After the film opened, Reitman ran the in-film Ghostbusters commercial on late-night TV nationwide with the on-screen number changed to a working 800 line, where callers reached an answering-machine message recorded by Aykroyd and Murray.
- The film went slightly over budget, finishing at around $31 million for production, with a reported $38 million total once marketing was factored in.4
Release
Ghostbusters opened in the United States on June 8, 1984.8 By the final count it had grossed more than $225 million, which Don Shay's account described as making it the most successful film comedy to that point.
The VHS was released on October 31, 1985.910 The film premiered, unadvertised, on HBO on Christmas night, December 25, 1985, then had its official HBO premiere on May 4, 1986, followed by Cinemax on May 7.11 It premiered on broadcast television on ABC on Thursday, September 24, 1987, in an edited-for-television version with alternate takes replacing some of the more objectionable dialogue. The DVD followed on June 29, 1999, and the Blu-ray on June 16, 2009, timed to the film's 25th anniversary and the release of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. An original 114-minute test screening was completed on February 17, 1984; a "preview cut" with alternate takes, additional scenes, and early effects was later included in the 2022 4K Ultra HD gift set.
The film was localized for many foreign markets, releasing under titles including S.O.S. Fantômes (French), Ghostbusters - Die Geisterjäger (German), Los Cazafantasmas (Spanish), Os Caça-Fantasmas (Portuguese), and Ghostbusters - Acchiappafantasmi (Italian).
Legacy
Ghostbusters launched a franchise spanning a direct sequel, Ghostbusters II (1989), the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, comics, video games including Ghostbusters: The Video Game, and later films including Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024). The firehouse, the Ecto-1, the Proton Pack, the PKE Meter, the Ghost Trap, and the Containment Unit introduced here became fixtures of the series. GBFans.com maintains build references and plans for much of this gear under the equipment section of the wiki.
The 1984 film established the visual and physical vocabulary of the Ghostbusters franchise, and GBFans.com's prop-building and collecting community grew directly from enthusiasm for its iconic hardware. The Proton Pack, Ghost Trap, PKE Meter, Containment Unit, and Ectomobile introduced here have been subjects of intensive research and documentation on GBFans.com for over two decades. The Equipment section of this wiki catalogues build references, production drawings, screen-accurate specifications, and community-produced plans for most of these items, along with the flight suits, belt hardware, and accessories seen in the film.
The 2022 4K Ultra HD gift set, which includes the 114-minute preview cut with early effects and alternate scenes, generated renewed community interest in comparing production-era prop and effects details against finished-film reference.
References
-
Shay, Don (November 1985). Making Ghostbusters. New York Zoetrope, New York NY USA, ISBN 0918432685.
-
Labrecque, Jeff (2014). "Ghostbusters: An Oral History." Entertainment Weekly.
-
Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History. Insight Editions, San Rafael CA USA, ISBN 9781608875108.
-
Greene, James, Jr. (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever. Lyons Press, Essex CT USA, ISBN 9781493048243.
-
Ghostbusters franchise production materials; Elmer Bernstein.
-
Ray Parker Jr., "Ghostbusters" (song, 1984). Columbia Records.
-
Lofficier, Randy (June 1984). American Cinematographer, p. 66. Hollywood CA USA, ASC Holding Corp, ASIN B004WSK5RO.
-
IMDb, Ghostbusters (1984), release information.
-
Asbury Park Press (October 9, 1985), p. 48.
-
Spook Central, "Ghostbusters On Home Video," Advertisements section.
-
HBO/Premium Channels, May 1986 program magazines.
